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The parable of patience

· ​Meditation ·

July 2, 2018

Matthew 13:24-30

Jesus
recounts that the kingdom of heaven is like a man who has sown good seed in his
field, but his enemy came in the night and sowed a bad, invasive weed, darnel
[formerly called tares]. The
servants wanted to uproot it but the householder restrained their zeal out of
fear that in gathering up the darnel they would also uproot the wheat. “Let
both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the
reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but
gather the wheat into my barn” (Mt 13:30).

Here
Matthew reports his Church’s experience. Jesus has sown his word, the Apostles have
continued sowing with their preaching and yet in Jesus’ community, in Matthew’s
community, in the Church, there is darnel, there is evil. Why? Where does it come from?

In our Christian
communities which must be a prophetic sign for the world, salt of the earth, a
lighted lamp to set on
the stand, a prophecy of love, of the peace of the Kingdom, how much injustice
there is in the world, how much overbearingness, what a superabundance of
backbiting, of nasty looks, of the condemnation of others! And doesn’t the same
thing happen within us, in the field of our hearts? Why? In the parable of the
weeds among the wheat there is no answer to this question. Before the mystery
of evil in all its forms, before this force which we also well know and
experience both within and outside ourselves, our questions are lost in silence
and another question reaches us: “You, how do you react to evil? Before the
darnel, the evil and the suffering, how do you live this ‘good hope’ (Wis
12:19) which the Father has placed in his children’s hearts?”.

Despite all
our infantile illusions the reality in which we live is wounded, missing
something and disappointing. Indeed, the
more we desire in our hearts the good seed, the more we see that invasive
darnel which at times seems to suffocate every tender plantlet and seems to
declare the uselessness of any effort to cultivate the field. Jesus’ teaching
does not focus on why the weeds sprang up, but on how to behave when faced with
these weeds. “No” : it is an order that disconcerts us, that contrasts with
what we consider the best part of ourselves, our desire for justice, truth,
holiness and radicalism, namely that
zeal which we all too often believe to be good zeal but which in reality proves
no different from the zeal of those two Apostles, James and John, the “sons of
thunder” (Mk 3:17), who on seeing Jesus refused by the inhabitants of a
Samaritan village ask him: “Lord, do you want us to bid fire come down from
heaven and consume them?” (Lk 9:54). They had not understood much of their
Master’s teaching! And yet how frequently over the course of history have we
felt authorized to light fires at the stake to burn those who, in our opinion
did not accept Jesus! There is a will to uproot evil by uprooting the sinner
which is not God’s way. The Church is not a sect of pure people nor are our
communities the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus tells
this “parable of patience”, of God’s patience first of all: God is patient, he
is in no hurry to judge, to separate the good seed from the darnel, he waits
patiently; with the patience that each one of us must have with him- or
herself, in watching the wheat and darnel growing side by side in the fields of
our hearts; patience with each other in the community, in the Church, forgoing
division, discrimination and condemnation, showing patience with one another,
bearing and carrying one another’s burdens, putting up even with the darnel in
others.

It is true
that a few chapters earlier, in Chapter 18, Matthew spoke of the need to recall
forcefully and also publicly those who do not live in accordance with the
Gospel, but this fraternal service must be done charitably, always remembering
the log in one’s own eye: “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you
will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Mt7:5).